


These Cages We Lie In

by StorytellerSecrets



Series: Sadness Is A Disease (And You're Infected) [1]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Allen Walker Needs a Hug, Anger, Angry Allen Walker, Bitter ending, Captivity, Howard Link Can Go Fuck Himself, Hurt No Comfort, Imprisonment, Introspection, Levierre Can Go Fuck Himself, Other, Poor Allen Walker, Resentment, and the noahs, everyone except allen can go fuck themselves, mentions of torture, so can the rest of the order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 22:42:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16732035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StorytellerSecrets/pseuds/StorytellerSecrets
Summary: There's only so much suffering a person can take, war or no, and Allen Walker is edging towards his limit (he has been for awhile).





	These Cages We Lie In

**Author's Note:**

> My Sad Son Needs A Hug. #fucktheorder
> 
> (I know I made Link out to be a jackass in this one but someone had to be it and Link was there so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ what can ya do???)

“You’re very angry today,” Link says like he shouldn’t be, and on the inside, Allen sneers. At this point, Allen thinks he has a right to be angry. On the outside, he quietly blanks the feeling from his face and tries not to think about how much this hurts.

 

It’s not like he’s been locked in a cage or tortured by the people he used to call friends. It’s not like Allen has had every single  _ goddamn _ person who was supposed to care about him betray him without a moment’s notice. It’s not like those very same people said  _ he _ betrayed  _ them _ and bound him so heavily with chains he couldn’t breathe.

 

No, it’s not like that at all because the world is kind to him. His friends love him and his family does, too. His arm is normal and his face is unscarred and the world is at peace. Allen has such a large family, Noahs and CROWs and Exorcists and regular humans sitting at an endlessly long dinner table that’s always filled with freshly-made food that never has anything unsafe in it. And he lives a normal life with a normal name that he acquired under normal circumstances in a normal world.

 

It’s nice, sitting at the table with his family. They all love him, and that fact is certain to the point that he  _ knows _ without anyone having to say it (though that doesn’t stop them from saying it anyways). He loves it here, loves it so much that he’d do anything to make it a reality.

 

And it’s selfish, he knows, to want this kind of thing from people that hate you. But it’s that very desire that’s the only thing keeping him tethered to reality, holding him in a tight embrace that keeps him from floating away to a place where he knows he’d rather be.

 

He doesn’t care that it’s selfish anymore. He did, back in the early days of his confinement. Now all he can focus on is escape, and since literal escape isn’t a possibility (he can’t even  _ stand _ most days, let alone run away), he has to find his release in a way that makes his eyes glass and his muscles lax against the cold wall of his cell.

 

He doesn’t care about most things anymore. He doesn’t care if he starves himself to death just like he doesn’t care if it’s his friends or his enemies torturing him. He just doesn’t  _ care _ , and he doesn’t care about not caring, either.

 

Allen knows Link is worried. He won’t lie, he takes a sick pleasure from it. If he was as strong as he was a month prior, he’d be shuddering in disgust at the idea of finding joy in other’s fear and concern.

 

But fuck it, let him be worried. Let him watch as Allen slowly kills himself because it’s not like either of them have a choice in the matter. He’s fought against the grain for so long, and that’s why he’s here. Link deserves to see what they’ve all done to him. They all deserve to see how broken he’s become because of them.

 

He knows that he had a reason for not letting Neah into his head, just like he’d previously had a reason for keeping his Innocence from the hands of the Noah. And he’d fought so diligently to keep himself whole, to keep every part of him together, that his innocence had crumbled into a dust that he knew wasn’t going to regenerate. His will had followed soon after. Now, the Fourteenth was the only thing keeping his heart together, literally and otherwise.

 

Neah is different, too. He doesn’t care to take over, wouldn’t have the energy to even if he wanted to. He talks less, but is more of a comforting presence than anything else (because at least  _ someone _ is there for him). At first the Noah had been so desperate to save the world and destroy the other Noahs, but that will had slowly chipped away. Now, he just wants release.

 

Allen pities him. As a ghost of a person, Neah can’t fall asleep into a vivid daydream where everything’s okay. He just suffers, constantly and without escape. And he knows that Allen get’s a break, but he doesn’t resent the boy for it at all because he knows that when Allen wakes up he’ll be worse than he was before. Nowadays, their relationship is more symbiotic than anything else.

 

Distantly, he wonders if this is what everyone wanted. If it was him that was the problem all along, and if his capture was a relief to anyone who knew him. He also wonders if any of the are still there, if any of his friends are still breathing. For all he knows, they could have all died out years ago.

 

Time was something that used to disorient him during the early days of his imprisonment. Days would pass in minutes, and minutes would pass in days. There was no way for him or Neah to tell, and he’d doubted Link would tell him if he’d asked. Not that he’d ask  _ him _ , a man he so directly despised it was written in his blood.

 

Now, it was the same way, but it was less disorienting because he was used to it. Everything went by in a blur, and that which didn’t was usually spent resting against one of the three walls in his cell (he wasn’t allowed by the wall that had the door). There was a small sliver of time he would spend talking quietly to himself, mumbling numbers and names and anything he could still remember--which, admittedly, wasn’t much--, but it was this time that he felt the most out of control, so he preferred not to dwell on it. Time wasn’t something he cared about anymore. Neither was Link.

 

He remembers faintly, that he used to care about the man that so often stood outside the door. He isn’t sure how deep those feelings went, but he knows that they were so far from his current ones for the man that they’d sent a jolt of surprise down his spine when he’d remembered them.

 

As of from what could quite equally be three weeks or two days into his imprisonment, he’d started building a growing resentment for the man. After all, he was the one who gave him the food laced with sedatives. He was the one who took paper pieces and turned them into weapons, and Link was the one who used those weapons on Allen. So, he resented Link with a fury that surprised even himself, and while he wasn’t the only one Allen hated by far, he was the one who spent most of his time with the boy.

 

Age was another strange concept he’d lost during his captivity. Of course, he hadn’t really known how old he was before, but he’d had a general idea. Now, the only way he could tell what age range he was in was through the fact that he hadn’t started growing hair on his face (unlike Link, who had started sprouting a blonde fuzz that covered his face somewhere down the line).

 

Sometimes he worried about Lenalee. There were days where all he’d do is worry about his friends, about their health and their state of being. Allen hated those days, just like he hated the friends he used to have. It was a bitter hate, and he hated that he hated them, but it was all he could do. No one had ever came to save him, so he didn’t care. They’d left him, so he’d leave them.

 

It was with this exact thought in mind that he laughed when Link asked when he was going to start eating again. He might’ve cried, but he stopped doing that a long time ago.

**Author's Note:**

> Please give me validation and kudos and comments and perhaps all your money if you feel up for it.


End file.
